War Stories

The story Jules told about her husband got me thinking about my Uncle Ned.  He's not my real uncle.  My grandmother was raised by her aunt. One of her cousins with whom she grew up, May, married Ned.  So he's really some sort of cousin-in-law 15 times removed or something.

Anyway, Ned was in the Royal Navy and they lived in Portsmouth.  He was on submarine duty during WWII.  He was captured and interred in a German POW camp.  He escaped a couple of times and they finally threw him in Colditz Castle.  That was it until the war ended.

May hadn't heard from Ned for ages and she honestly thought he was dead.  One day she was headed out the door to go to the shops and there he was coming up the walk.

Long story short, my mother was raised by Ned and May from the age of eleven.  When I was a little boy we lived in Salisbury in the south of England.  Portsmouth wasn't far and we spent a lot of time with them.  I really regret not being older and tapping Ned's mind for these sort of stories.  He was a gentle, quiet man and I really didn't get much out of him.  I didn't even know this story until years later.  He was just kind old Uncle Ned.

Ned's buried in the Gorey graveyard back in Ireland.  Nobody keeps it up as his relatives are spread far and wide, one son has passed and the other still lives in England.  Whenever we go back we take some shovels down and clean it up as best we can. 

That generation is going to be completely gone soon.  I think Tom Brokaw had it right.  They were amazing people in amazing times.  It's sad to think so much knowledge and many of those stories will soon be gone forever.

I think I've said it before, but I blame Disney.

Sure.

Used to be that stories were handed down from generation to generation, we respected our elders and we listened, many times to the same story and then we handed down the legends and stories that were told to us. We were a community.

And then Walt Disney created a little talking mouse on a very big screen, and the little mouse told stories, then the little mouse had friends and they told stories, and soon, enough money was created that the human was able to build a huge park in California and everyone came to the park because it was the happiest place on earth and the stories were told there instead of by grandma and grandpa, it was an amazing place where even dead Presidents came to life.

I wonder about things like Alzheimer's, if it would be so prevalent if we still tapped into their minds, they are a generation that lived through a great depression, one world war (some 2 world wars) and several conflicts, they've seen a madman nearly take over the entire planet and they've seen several real men of peace, they've seen us go from horse and buggies (well maybe Models T's) to men walking on the moon.

I'd rather listen to grandma and grandpa, but I blame that little mouse and the man who created him.

I guess I wouldn't blame it *all* on the mouse, but I think you're right about that.  Television in general has become a huge time-occupier.  I've heard my mom say things like that time and again.  She's also tried to make sure that didn't happen to us.

My eldest Uncle, Claude Earl, had three landing boats sunk under him.  He was a coxswain,  Africa, Sicily, Normandy.  He didn't talk much about that though.  His favourite stories were of the 'smoker' boxing matches between English/Canadian Navy and US Navy.  I was a coxswain during my service as well.

Mothers older brother Parnell was a crew member on a flight rescue chopper in Viet Nam.  He's got a Silver Star with 2 oak leaf clusters, A Bronze Star with 4 oak leaf clusters, and a myriad of others I can't recall.  He never spoke of them.  I only found out whilst working geneaology.  My fathers youngest brother, Dorsey, got the Navy Cross at Hue, he was a Marine.

Having done the geneaology, I discovered that my family has spilled blood for this country since 1758.  For both sides during the war of Northern Aggression.